I'm not sure about AMEX - I think AMEX has its own problems - and the chart-lagging problem is an old one that usually remain trivial or easy to address (depending on the cause/situation). The main problem I've been having is with L2 and the Order Bar being out of sync, often for extended periods of time. L1 (bid/last/ask) has diverged from the quotes displayed in the L2 montage, often in perplexing, annoying, inconvenient, and eventually costly ways. P&L has also been out of sync on open positions, and there've been other, apparently related problems as well.

They've been persistent enough for me to contemplate switching to a new set-up - and I say this as a longtime user and client and notorious booster of TS. Also, though I've generally had good experiences with tech support there, on this matter I received a totally unsatisfactory response.

Today was terrible as far as level 2. My charts seem fine, but I also have e-signal and eASCtrend running so I use their charts primarily. It seems AMEX quotes get hung up even as the bid/offer changes. I have also had trouble the last couple of days with the order bar not being in sync as well....
Today though the level 2 quotes were a mess and I'm not sure if the trouble is on my end.
I have been happy with T.S. since I switched at the end of Sept., and I hope these issues are temporary.....I hate switching brokers.
Cybertrader was great, but the fees were just too high....

Originally posted by catman
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Today was terrible as far as level 2... It seems AMEX quotes get hung up even as the bid/offer changes. I have also had trouble the last couple of days with the order bar not being in sync as well....

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Today though the level 2 quotes were a mess and I'm not sure if the trouble is on my end.
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More...

It seems to me (I'm not 100% sure) that the problems began around the time or soon after the last software upgrade - when they changed method of running P/L calculation (I prefered the old way, actually). I also recall a period when they were first having peculiar problems with L2 data on small caps - and it may be around that time that these out-of-sync difficulties actually began. Then there were the net-wide WCOM-related problems. And there was just a post on another thread describing something similar on RealTick...

After much annoyance and vain hope the problem would "take care of itself," I started taking screen shots of occurences as far back as early October 2 (see below), so I know the problem has been around for well more than a month.

I have also had the occaisonal problem due to WCOM and issues with Bellsouth as far as connectivity...but hadn't noticed many other issues with T.S. until a few days ago....and today just seemed really bad. I deal with the order bar issue by keeping my cursor on the up or down arrow and manually adjust the price.
When I first looked into T.S. you mentioned it was not the best for scalping (you were right about that), so I have adjusted my trading style. Overall I have been pleased, but I sure hoe these issues get resolved.

I had a lot of problems with TradeStation until I got a computer that is 4 times as big as my old one. Now it runs just fine, no glitches, no stopping.....I use the one computer just to trade. What they have as a minimum requirement on their site does not run the software.....I use a laptop with a 40gbhd and 1050mb memory....and I took off some of the programs that come pre-installed in the computer for good measure.
When you have a lot of workspaces open, it uses up the memory like crazy. I usually reboot lunchtime so that my caches are cleaned.
I also like that they tell you when they have data problems. The other broker I used did not and it lead to a lot of losses.

Many problems I was having were solved when I applied the "heap memory" fix detailed in the TradeStationWorld web site (under a thread whose title includes the words "desktop heap memory") - a typical Windows-related, not TS-related problem. I haven't, for instance, had any crashes since applying the fix - except for the one time I experimented with overloading the number of workspaces I could load at once - seemed to max out for the kind of workspaces I was loading somewhere above 300.